By Richard N. Shapiro, FELA Attorney

BNSF employees, firefighters and other emergency response personnel spent Monday, February 28, 2011, cleaning up lye spilled from one of the railroad’s freight trains that had derailed on the shores of the Puget Sound in Washington (WA) over the weekend. No immediate injuries or deaths from the derailment or toxic chemical release were reported, and rail service has resumed on the tracks outside the city of University Place near Tacoma.

The BNSF train derailed after sideswiping another train. No cause for that collision has been determined.

Officials estimate that 50 gallons of lye leaked out of one of 15,000-gallon tanker cars that overturned when it went off the rails. Lye, which is also known as caustic soda and has the chemical name sodium hydroxide, is used to soften water by removing dissolved minerals and as an active ingredient in industrial cleaning compounds. The chemical can also cause severe burns to people’s skin, eyes, mouth, throat and lungs when they get it on themselves or breathe in fumes. Putting lye in water sends up large clouds of harmful gas. The damage done by lye burns can be permanent, especially if the chemical gets into a person’s esophagus or lungs.

The accident in Washington was at least the second dangerous spill of toxic chemicals from a freight train in the United States during the month of February. On the 20th, three Norfolk Southern contract workers needed hospital treatment for inhalation and contact injuries caused by exposure to molten sulfur. Those NS employees were not wearing protective suits when they got hurt in Roanoke, Virginia (VA).

Freight train tankers are an efficient and economical way to transport potentially deadly chemicals, ranging from sulfuric acid to chlorine gas. But as the two recent chemical accidents show, engineers, conductors, trackmen, switchmen and other rail workers face significant risks to their lives and health when they haul or work on and around tank cars filled with such volatile cargo. Railroad operators such as BNSF, CSX, NS and Union Pacific must do everything they can to protect their employees from chemical poisoning and burns, as well as long-term health problems such as respiratory failure caused by damaged or cancer-riddled lungs.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including Dos and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). We provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at (800) 752-0042 before giving any statement or talking to a railroad claims agent. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.